Night
The children sleep.
Behind me on the mantelpiece,
reflected from the darkness of the window,
a Chinese traveler with a broad-brimmed hat
slouches on his terra-cotta donkey;
my face is his worried moon.
Stroking the worn green leather of the desk,
I try to write letters.
I had good friends, I think,
but what are they to me? When death happened,
I embarked on a sleepless journey like an Egyptian,
eyes painted open on the coffin
that holds me, such a sarcophagus
as the children and I saw in the Louvre,
with bold red and black bands
and prayers of magic that scaled its sides.
Mail from home arrives infrequently.
How difficult it is to communicate
with someone of another world.
Market Day
On Tuesdays I go to the marché.
My shopping cart squeaks along
between the trestle tables.
Behind them men and women
with chapped hands clamor
to catch my eye while I admire
pyramids of blood oranges and leeks,
white-legged like fillies, piled near
tightly wrapped nosegays
of parsley, chives, and thyme,
and tiny peeled potatoes the color of ivory.
Mushrooms sprout in sandy boxes,
some with black gills, or orange-red ones
called pleurotes, the word
that makes me cry, pleurer.
After I've put the food away,
I'll throw myself on the bed, dressed,
weeping, and sleep for hours
until the children arrive from school.
Then I'll leap up, guilty, abandoning her
as they come running in,
fearful of some new loss.
Journey
Where are we going, love,
in a little yellow cart called marriage,
a dog, loyal, running after,
rings on our fingers?
Broad old road
taking us to market,
the fields on either side
flatten out to the sky.
Beyond the towns
is there an ocean
we might in the end
discover?
Narcissi in Winter
They open their purses
and out fall stars.
From the long earth sleep
a perfume
sweet as manure
piercing as rain.
Out of papery domes
these green ladders ascend
trusting the air.
Nothing is truer
than the plumb line
to heaven,
so rooted in a round,
brown knowledge of themselves
and January's
white dark.
